Conference of the Liber Groupe des Cartothecaires, Tallinn 15 – 19 June 2010

Wouter Bracke

The meeting of the Groupe des Cartothécaires took place in Tallinn from the 15th to the 19th of June 2010. It was hosted by the of Estonia, with the support of the University of Tartu Library. A committee was set up with representatives of the organizing institutions: Tiina Kruup, head of the organizing committee, map curator, National Library of Estonia (NLE); Anne Lentsius, map curator (NLE); Kristina Pai, director of collections, Tartu University Library; Katre Riisalu, head of Fine Arts Information Centre (NLE); Mari Kannusaar, chief specialist of International Relations; Tiiu Nõmm, head of the Conference Centre (NLE) and Õnne Mets, head of Public Relations Department (NLE); and Kaja Tampuu, Department of Cartography, Estonian Land Board.

The number of delegates was relatively high - 50 map librarians representing 16 countries with backgrounds in libraries (national, university, public), archives (national, regional or local), cartographic agencies, research institutions or museums.

The committee chose the following theme for the Tallinn meeting: A Map Library as the Centre of Cartographic Information. The sessions took place from Tuesday morning till Friday afternoon in the national library and University of Tartu Library.

On Tuesday 15 June the conference was opened at 11 o’clock in the morning. Hélène Richard, announcing her withdrawal as the group’s president, and John Moore, secretary of the group, made a general overview of the group’s activities and main problems encouraging the participants to speak up during the round table session scheduled on Friday. Renata Solar (National and University Library of Slovenia) brought the results of the Liber GdC questionnaire 2008. The questionnaire evaluated work of LIBER GdC and its Board, home page, working groups and conferences as well as possibilities of personal contribution to the Group, suggestions, comments and expectations of each member. Nick Millea, former president of the Working Group for Education who couldn’t attend the meeting, had his report sent. The keynote speaker of the conference was Janne Andresoo (NLE). In his conference tackling the question of Digital memory: dilemmas for libraries?, Janne, who also spoke for his colleague Mihkel Volt, addressed ideological, economic, administrative and legal aspects in connection with the developing of long-term preservation policies. This closed the morning session. After lunch in the library, the first working session was dedicated to visual access to the digital map library. The first speaker was Martijn Storm (Leiden University Library). He presented the project Topographic memory: digitizing 14.000 topographical prints and drawings. Within the national digitization program The Memory of the Netherlands, a catalogue of more than 400.000 images of objects, hosted by the Royal Library in The Hague, a collection of approximately 14.000 topographical prints and drawings of Leiden University Library will be digitized. Then followed Wouter Bracke (Royal library of ) with a critical report on the Digmap project : The Digmap project revisited. He also appealed to the public for some help in research on the editions of the Atlas universel published by Philippe Vandermaelen. After tea and coffee, Jean-Luc Arnaud (National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)) presented the CartoMundi project (An International Collective Catalogue for cartography : CartoMundi). This project wants to homogenize the referencing of key maps to map series through the contribution of main libraries. Staying closely related to this subject, Olivier Loiseaux (Bibliothèque nationale de France) spoke about the advantages a project like CartoMundi could have for libraries looking for a graphic tool to manage their map collections. The National Library of France is taking an active interest in the project CartoMundi : Using CartoMundi : changes in map librarianship, interfacing and perspectives. At 5 o’clock, the participants prepared for a tour of the National Library and after that they attended a welcome reception in the Fine Art Information Centre of the NLE. Participants got the chance to take a look at the Cartography and Geography reading room and discuss its working situation.

At the second working session dedicated to A map library as a centre of cartographic information on Wednesday 16 June, Henrik Dupont (The Royal Library, Copenhagen) spoke on Aerial photographs and satellite images in map collections - what to do?. Sabine Witschas (Leibniz Institute of Ecological and Regional Development, IOER) discussed knowledge management in her institution with a paper having the rather provocative title From FAUST to VOYAGER - efforts to maintain maps and geodata stocks,. The Leibniz Institute of Ecological and Regional Development IOER is a spatial research institute that is confronted with a great demand for maps and geodata that serve both as information sources for spatial researches and as final representations of the study results. Sabine compared the archiving system Faust, ESRI ArcCatalogue and Voyager GIS 1.1. Lucina Szaniawska (National Library of Poland) then spoke on Index sheets in the Polish bibliography of cartographic materials online. She discussed the national library’s initiative to stop publishing printed copies of the Bibliografia Dokumentķw Kartograficznych = Bibliography of Cartographic Materials and replace them by PDF files that are accessible on the library’s website. After a short tea and coffee break Eva Loolaid-Raudpuu (EOMAP Geodata Ltd) explained in her paper entitled Information system for cultural history and archival data in Tallinn how EOMAP Geodata Ltd has created an information system KAJA for Tallinn that combines cultural history, archival data and maps as a working tool for employees in Tallinn City Archives (Tallinna Linnaarhiiv) and residents in Tallinn. Svetlana Sviridenko (National library of Russia) spoke on the electronic library of Russian maps of the 18th century and Annick Anceau (University of Liege; Earth Sciences Library) gave a very practical overview of how to find cartographic materials. Around noon there was the possibility of visiting a small map market in the main entrance of the library. Afterwards the participants could visit the library’s Preservation Department. In the afternoon they had time to attend the poster sessions of the national progress reports. Indeed, the organizing committee had decided to adopt the initiative taken by the Dutch colleagues during the previous conference to present posters instead of having the delegates deliver a paper. In Amsterdam this initiative was very well received by the national representatives as well as the audience. The possibility was given to present short presentations. The following subjects were treated: Internet-based topographical map services on Central and Eastern Europe (Wolfgang Kreft), MapRank search technology for the geographical search in map library catalogues (Jost Shmid) and Access to map sheet index in IER-portal (Thorvaldur Bragason). This session was a real success.

On Thursday 17 June the conference moved to Tartu, the University of Tartu Library for its third working session on Cartography and map librarianship of Estonia. The session started with a paper by Vello Paatsi (Estonian Literary Museum) on the of Tartu - the Estonian Literary Museum, University of Tartu Library and Estonian Historical Archives. Tõnu Oja (Department of Geography, University of Tartu) then spoke about Cartography at the University of Tartu: Heritage, Activities and Prospect. A data management system was created and launched at the Department of Geography to enable efficient use of maps, spatial databases and images (www.digiarhiiv.loom.ut.ee). Kristian Teiter (Estonian Land Board) closed the morning session with a presentation of the geoportal and web map server of the Estonian Land Board, the national mapping and cadastral agency. After lunch a quite amusing presentation took the participants to the library’s landscape theatre where they were introduced to a virtual landscape modeling and visualization system of the Estonian University of Life Sciences – the Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

On Friday 18 June the 4th and last working session was dedicated to the Future of the map librarianship. Carme Montaner and Rafael Rose (Cartographic Institute of Catalonia) introduced the next conference topic by asking some pertinent questions in their paper on The map library after digitalization: new challenges. Indeed, digitalization has proved to be a good tool for map libraries to preserve and display its collections, but what should be the next step? The maps, the users, the environment in general are rapidly changing. How should map libraries face this new environment? How to address issues such as georeferencing, digital preservation, the metacataloging, social networks, portals and aggregators… How far should map libraries go? Are map libraries ready? New challenges require new tasks, interdisciplinary teams, partnerships and institutional cooperation, new skills on map librarianship, and possibly the reviewing of many other aspects. At the end of the last session of the Conference on Friday afternoon there was a very passionate discussion on the group’s future, the existing and potentially new working groups and cooperation between map libraries in Europe. Moderator of the discussion was Kalju Tammaru (Repository Library of Estonia). After which, a new board was elected by the group which then chose amongst its members the group’s president.

Cultural and social occasions were not overlooked, as the congress was received wonderfully by the NLE and by University of Tartu Library. A simple conference dinner took place at the Tricky-Ants Farm, an authentic Estonian farmhouse. Special exhibitions were presented by the National Library of Estonia (Greetings from Tallinn – town plans and postcards 1856-2010), the University Library of Tartu (Map Treasures) and the Estonian National Museum (Estonia’s map making milestones). Finally, most delegates seized the opportunity to go on an excursion to Lahemaa National Park on Saturday. The day was spent in peaceful unspoiled nature surrounded by rural charm. Unfortunately, the author of the report could not accompany his colleagues on this trip.

This conference was extremely rich, providing an opportunity to discuss fundamental questions about the future of the group and the expectations of its members.

Some papers will be published in the Liber Quarterly.

Further information on the conference can be found at the following address : http://www.nlib.ee/html/yritus/liber09/usef.html

The next meeting will be held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain in 2011.

The questionnaire evaluated work of LIBER GdC and its Board, home page, working groups and conferences as well as possibilities of personal contribution to the Group, suggestions, comments and expectations of each member. It is accessible on the Group’s website.